


What it's Like to Touch

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Hannigram - Freeform, M/M, Post-Series, Sensuality, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:44:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6403594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall, Will needs to try something before he can understand his feelings for Hannibal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What it's Like to Touch

 Will emerged from his bedroom looking more alive than dead for the first time since the Atlantic spit them back out onto the shore. Previous to that, he had only risen to relieve himself in their shared bathroom, or propped himself up enough to eat whatever Hannibal had cooked in the meager kitchen afforded him by their rented cabin. Then, without fail, he had always retreated once more to his bedroom and shut the door between them.

“You’re looking well,” Hannibal said. He had been about to scramble half a dozen eggs in butter, but started towards Will now, ready to check his bandages.

“Stay there,” Will said. “I need to find out.”

“What is it you need to find out, Will?”

Will only lifted a hand, effectively shushing him from across the room. Hannibal fell silent, waiting at the kitchen counter. Will approached him without meeting his gaze. For several moments, he held one hand over Hannibal’s, not touching but close enough to feel each other’s warmth. Hannibal lifted his thumb off the counter to bridge that small distance.

“Uh uh,” Will chastised him. “Don’t move.”

Hannibal dutifully lowered his thumb.

“I’ve thought about killing you so many times I can’t count,” Will said. “About smashing my fists into your face until I felt both our bones breaking. About slitting your throat and letting your blood rain over me. I’ve considered strangling you, and found myself holding my own breath every time.”

“And now?” Hannibal prompted.

“Now… Now I’m considering using my hands in other ways,” Will said. He rubbed gently at the cuff of Hannibal's shirt, just over his wrist, not touching the skin. “In ways I suppose I never permitted myself to consider before.”

“Before you embraced me on the bluff and pitched us into the sea.”

“No, before that,” Will said. “Bedelia said you were in love with me, and asked if I felt the same.”

Hannibal resisted the urge to ask what Will's reply had been. Instead he said, “That’s when these new thoughts started.”

“They felt intrusive,” Will said. “I thought at first I was simply… assuming your point of view. Feeling what you were feeling. That what I felt wasn’t from me.”

“Or _for_ me,” Hannibal offered. “What convinced you otherwise? Or are you convinced now?”

“ _That’s_ what happened on the bluff,” Will said. He traced a finger up Hannibal's sleeve and across his shoulders. “When I reached for you. I felt like my own self for the first time in a long, long time. I knew which thoughts were my own. Feeling you solid beneath me, I knew where we blurred and where we were our own selves.”

Hannibal gripped the counter, white-knuckled, and could think of nothing to say.

“Take off your shirt,” Will commanded.

He did so without hesitation, tossing it to the floor without care. He would have set all his clothes on fire if Will had said to. He started to turn around, but Will pressed in close behind him -- not close enough for contact, but close enough to hold him fast with just the heat of his body.

He felt a slight shift behind him and then Will's shirt joined his on the floor.

The first touch fell at the small of his back, just the merest brush of Will's fingertips. Hannibal bit down on his lower lip to keep silent.

The next traced up the length of his spine and around the edges of the Verger brand. Will rubbed over the bandage still wrapped around his midsection, pressing slightly at the place the bullet had pierced his flesh. He would have given nobody else the privilege of seeing him in pain, but he flinched without shame now. Will's touch trailed away from his wounds and over the lines of his shoulder blades. The pressure was maddeningly light when he wanted Will to dig his fingers in to the meat of his body. Tearing his muscles from his bones would have been less torture.

Will's fingers snaked up the back of his neck and into his hair, fanning out over his scalp. His other hand came around the front, gripping his jaw. _He could break my neck_ , Hannibal thought. _He could kill me with his hands after all._ Still, he didn't move.

The hand on his jaw moved down to his throat, pressing against his Adam's apple. "Swallow for me," Will said, breath hot against his shoulder. "I want to feel that, too."

Hannibal did as he was told, again.

"Turn around to face me," Will said.

Hannibal did that, too.

Now Will's hands spread across his chest, lightly raking through the hair with his nails before moving down his abdomen. He paused when he reached the top of Hannibal's trousers, fingers toying at the edge of the waistband.

By now, he could smell that Will was aroused, as much as he himself was, but to reach out now, to act on it, might be disastrous. Hannibal only risked speaking. "Should I finish undressing?"

"No," Will said, licking his lips. "No...Not yet. No moving yet."

Hannibal called on all his powers of self-control to remain still as Will reached up to touch his face. He ran the pad of his thumb over the scar that bit into his cheek, like a smaller echo of the one on Will's own.

Hannibal held his breath as Will pressed against him as he had on the bluff. Just as he did then, he rested his head against Hannibal's shoulder, sighing as all the warring inside him sublimated into thin air. Only this time, they were skin to skin, every nerve stretched and vibrating as if reaching toward one another.

"May I?" Hannibal asked after a long while.

Will nodded without pulling away, so Hannibal finally, _finally_ let his hands come up to hold him.

"I needed to understand what it was like to touch you," Will said into his skin, "knowing we were both going to live through it."

"Do you understand now?" Hannibal asked.

Will said nothing.

Abruptly, he broke from the embrace and stepped back until he found himself against the opposite counter. This whole time, they hadn't looked one another in the eye, but now Will did look up. The glance was over almost before it began, just enough to show Hannibal how glazed his eyes were, how flushed his face and throat.

And then Will was marching back to his bedroom, like he had every day that they'd been there.

But this time...

 _This_ time, he left the door open.

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first fic I started writing after TWotL, but I felt much more comfortable writing and posting all the crackier things. Being ridiculous is in my nature, but this thing demanded I come back to it, so here we are.


End file.
